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Celebrating John Coltrane with Cultural Documentarian Steve Rowland
Steve Rowland is a documentarian, educator, lover of music and humanity. Discussing his journey for this article was enjoyable, thought-provoking and informative. Steve is a humble man, and he wanted the focus of this article to be on the music, but I hope also to shed light on what goes into the development of a good man who lives a life of integrity. Our initial discussion for the interview took place last year and the discussions grew with a lasting ...
read morePromise Kept: The Complete Artists House Recordings
A Man and His Word Art Pepper's career as an alto saxophonist is often said to exist in two eras, separated by incarceration and marriage, joined together by a penchant for substance abuse. In 1952, Pepper was a young jazzman on the rise in a world where John Coltrane and Miles Davis had yet to become household names. This era, which gained substantial steam with the release of The Art Pepper Quartet (Tampa, 1956), was one where he laid the ...
read moreKris Davis: Diatom Ribbons
The virtuoso pianist and composer Kris Davis has been ubiquitous in 2019. Her projects with Nate Wooley, Ken Vandermark, and Craig Taborn have been complemented by her appointment to the faculty of the Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. Davis will serve as associate director of creative development and teach composition and improvisation courses. The Berklee program's founder and artistic director, Terri Lyne Carrington, is one member of the outstanding ensemble that appears on Davis' new project Diatom Ribbons. ...
read more5x3: Piano Trios: September 2019
Well, some months are packed too full of these goodies to cover in batches of three. We can only hang on and try to keep up. Aki Rissanen Art in Motion Edition Records 2019 Past, present and future don't collide but smash together in one happy jumble through this trio's splendid third outing. The stately refinement of European classical and folk music, the mantric minimalism of Nik Bärtsch and the modern ...
read moreSaxophone Summit: Street Talk
Since coming together in 1999 to celebrate the late-period work of John Coltrane, the aptly named Saxophone Summit has lost only one original member. Michael Brecker passed in 2007 and was replaced by Ravi Coltrane, who has in turn been replaced by Greg Osby. The other principals, Joe Lovano and Dave Liebman, are unchanged, as is the accompanying trio of pianist Phil Markowitz, bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Billy Hart. As its name claims, the ensemble is ...
read moreAbdullah Ibrahim: Dream Time
Stream-of-consciousness solo-piano recitals come in as many shades as jazz itself. At one extreme are Keith Jarrett's messianic epics. At another are Abdullah Ibrahim's less flashy but deeper outings. Ibrahim's style is about substance, space and subtlety. He says more by doing less. Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, after all, were his formative influences. Dream Time was recorded in March 2019 at the Hirzinger Concert Hall in Sölinhuben, in the foothills of the German Alps where Ibrahim ...
read moreCharlie Parker & Sonny Rollins
From a big name in the world of Canadian jazz, we go up north to begin episode 613 with the great PJ Perry presenting material off his new album The Quiet Room. From there, we pay respects to the great Charlie Parker in Kansas City during the Bird Celebration during August for what would have been his 99th year on earth. We hear from the past and present cats to celebrate his honor and those in the world of Kansas ...
read moreKen Vandermark with Kris Davis/Hamid Drake/Paul Lytton/Ikue Mori/William Parker: Momentum 4: Consequent Duos 2015>2019 (Box Set)
When reed player and composer Ken Vandermark launched his recording career in 1995, he did so with the deceptively titled Standards (Quinnah Records). Free improvisations with titles like “Rage for Speaking" and “A Sick Man's Dreams" indicated a different view of the agreed-upon definition. And so, it has been and has evolved, over nearly twenty-five years of creating spontaneous music, that Vandermark pushes the envelope, never content to stay at the preceding destination. He continues to challenge himself and his ...
read moreBrötzmann / Schlippenbach / Bennink: Fifty Years After...
To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the game changing recording Machine Gun (BRÖ, 1968), saxophonist Peter Brötzmann recruited drummer Han Bennink from the original session, plus pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach. While Schlippenbach wasn't in the house for Machine Gun (the pianist was Fred Van Hove), he can be heard on the Peter Brötzmann Group's fully automatic Alarm (FMP, 1983). Interestingly, to produce the fierce sound of Machine Gun, Brötzmann utilized an octet and likewise, Alarm was a meaty ...
read moreMuster: Find A City To Live In
Muster consists of electric guitarist James O'Sullivan from South London and electronicist Dan Powell from Brighton, some fifty miles away. This duo was formed accidentally in November 2016, when Powell was supposed to be playing in another duo as part of a Catford Constitutional improv night; the other member couldn't make it, so Powell and O'Sullivan formed an ad hoc duo, having previously played together at the London manifestation of the Long Half Day, twelve hours of continuous improvisation with ...
read moreRiver City Jazz Masters Preview, Newk, Tadd & More
Happy 89th birthday to Mr. Sonny Rollins! After some 21st century music from Hudson, Joshua Redman (his latest), UK pianist Zoe Rahman [whew!], Chicagoland's Geof Bradfield & Kamasi Washington, we preview the Baton Rouge River City Jazz Masters 2019-2020 season at the Manship Theatre (Eddie Palmieri, Eric Alexander, Nicholas Payton AND Jazzmeia Horn)! It's gonna be good, you bet. We continue our chronological celebration of Sonny Rollins-- tracks with the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet. This logically led to ...
read moreJohn Coltrane: Blue World
Discovering old and forgotten audio tapes of a jazz icon like John Coltrane is always exciting, but their posthumous release can have mixed motives. Taking advantage of the musician's name to make money is less salutary than, say, providing more great music for the public or providing opportunities for enthusiasts and scholars to fill in gaps and trace the musician's progress. Always in the background is the question of whether the musician would have permitted their release if he or ...
read moreShowcase
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It's Morning by Led Bib
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A Moment of You by Daniela Soledade
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Playing The Room by Avishai Cohen - Trumpet
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Roma by Enrico Rava
